Open Sauce Ideas thread

[Rhydgaled]

This please, goddamn it would make things so much better if the fp permutation corrolated with the 3p permutation. Instead of having an elite with spartan arms, talk about off-putting.

The post you quoted was refering to animations, not the model I think. However I like both the animation and model permatation ideas, if they can be done they should be done, so the fp and 3p match up.

At present the fp arms model is defined in the globals tag, that would need to be moved to each biped tag (which makes me think it wouldn't be possible) if you expect to be able to bump posess other bipeds and see a change in fp arms.

I've just updated my post from a page or two back, please don't overlook it when you come to tell us what isn't possible and what is.

[p0lar_bear]

For #34, I think it would be better to use Bink video, since the game already uses it, it has free official coding tools (RAD Game Tools), and it's a defined codec (whereas an AVI file can be encoded with any given format, like Cinepak, Windows Media, or MPEG-4). In fact, would it be possible to have a ui_widget_definition_os tag with the "movie" type reinstated? I'll elaborate on what I'm looking for below.

I +1 #27 as well. Sapien seems to still have stuff in it for recorded animations, but the problem is that Sapien doesn't accept player input, so all you can do is record a biped or vehicle standing there, doing nothing.

-Right, movie widgets. What crappens there is that you select it to be the movie type, define the bounds, and further down the tag, define an external (meaning not within the map cache file) BIK file and a placeholder bitmap (internal) in the event that the BIK file is missing or can't be loaded, and then a timeout in seconds before the video is loaded and played. Implementation? Level previews. Take what we have now for the level select screen, but if you keep one option selected for a few seconds, a video starts playing, like a teaser trailer. Kinda like the game select screen for the console version of the Orange Box. The defined bounds would clip the video (so if you had a 200x150px video and you set the widget to be only 150x150, it would cut off 50 px of the width), unless making it scale/squash the video to fit the bounds is less work can clipping it.

-Would it also be possible to make models animate in the UI? Right now, if you place a biped or animated scenery into a UI, it will freeze in place. I had to make scenery versions of the Chief and Spark with a fixed pose for my Library UI.

[Rhydgaled]

For #34, I think it would be better to use Bink video, since the game already uses it, it has free official coding tools (RAD Game Tools), and it's a defined codec (whereas an AVI file can be encoded with any given format, like Cinepak, Windows Media, or MPEG-4). In fact, would it be possible to have a ui_widget_definition_os tag with the "movie" type reinstated? I'll elaborate on what I'm looking for below.

I've just updated my post from a page or two back, I added more about videos and widgets. See that post for my opinon on some of this.

Would it also be possible to make models animate in the UI? Right now, if you place a biped or animated scenery into a UI, it will freeze in place.

I second this idea. By the way the dust emmiter (and probablly others) doesn't work either (I once had a UI of my HALO 3 Anouncement map and the grunt sign animated scenery wouldn't animate and the dust wasn't there.)

[p0lar_bear]

No, I think there's a better way. Instead of .avi files, we need animated .bitmap tags (like animated .gifs), so you can just stick one in the background image slot of the UI_widget_definiton. A special new tool command to take a folder of image files (exported from a video) and turn them into a perfectly set up animated.bitmap tag would be needed (or at least very, very helpfull) for this.

I would imagine the overhead, not to mention the work needed on the end-user's part, for that would be more than it's worth.

A script allowing you to play .bik files (unless ending.bik is called by script anyway) would be a good related addition. (You could save tagspace by screen-recording all cutscenes then replacing them with calls to .bik files or call a .bik file if the user is idle at the main menu long enough (like the trailer thing that shows up in HALO 2 and HALO 3)).

That would be a cool idea. Right now bink calls are hardcoded; it looks for bungie.bik, gearbox.bik, and mgs.bik on startup, and then plays ending.bik after the credits, when THOSE are called after running (game_won) on d40.map.

e: Another idea; support for a reload-2 animation for fake dualies or more conventional secondary-trigger weapons (e.g. grenade launchers). However, I don't know exactly how to go about making it work; if we made it into an overlay animation, it would work for dual weapons, but look weird if you reloaded both magazines at once on, say, the BRG. Perhaps add a flag somewhere to the weapons that, when checked, disables all triggers on a weapon until reloading is complete for either magazine?

Ooh, another one: is it possible to fix the double-melee glitch (throw a punch, when it hits, toss a grenade and immediately follow up with another punch)?

[bobbysoon]

also, enter and exit vehicle-2 would be pretty cool, make the scorpion's 2nd hatch functional for a turret operator.
hit-testing scenery and other objects in sapien, for while placing and moving objects?
tool scripts_compile to speed up script debugging
maps\<mapname>.dll plugin support

[DEElekgolo]

Realtime bump mapping system.
AA
Light attenuation?
Wide screen resolutions
A better reflection system.
Custom HLSL shaders.

[p0lar_bear]

Realtime bump mapping system.
AA
Light attenuation?
Wide screen resolutions
A better reflection system.
Custom HLSL shaders.

Korn's said time and time again, can't do much in the way of shader-related things without the actual source code.

[KiLLa]

He said in his post that he'd use NFWOS instead of "Not Feasible without Source (Code)" after he mentioned it the first time.

Well excuse me for not hanging on every word typed..
Could have just explained the meaning, ina non assfaced like manner

Anywho, I was referring to animations, not models.
It's possible to make variations(aka permuations) of animations in 3p only currently, but it's not possible in fp, and if it was via OS, it would be nice if both animations matched up when played..
If you look at the elites 3p sword animations you'll notice what I'm talking about..

[Rhydgaled]

I would imagine the overhead, not to mention the work needed on the end-user's part, for that would be more than it's worth.

That's why I said about a new tool command to automaticly take a whole folder of images and set them up as an animated.bitmap for you. Maybe the command could be like this:

tool animated_bitmap <folder path> <animation framerate (frames per second)>

I think there are also a few video editing programs that can export every frame of a video in .tif format for you, all you would need to do is move them to you HALO data folder. The animated bitmaps would have to be compiled as interface bitmaps of course, video clips tend not to be power of two dimensions (I think).

Right now bink calls are hardcoded; it looks for bungie.bik, gearbox.bik, and mgs.bik on startup, and then plays ending.bik after the credits, when THOSE are called after running (game_won) on d40.map.

Ok, I knew the first three must have been coded into the game's .exe but I thourght ending.bik might have been script called.

Another idea; support for a reload-2 animation for fake dualies or more conventional secondary-trigger weapons (e.g. grenade launchers).

Good idea, also my idea of zooming to switch between primary and secondary triggers could use a zoom in and zoom out animation (those could be used to rasie the scope towards the visor in normal zooming suituations, except you can't really look down scopes with a helmet on (hence the smart-linking)). By the way, if you didn't have any keyframes for a frame anywhere else, could you move that frame during a zoom in animation and have it stay put until zoom out? (I'm thinking you could screw on a scilencer instead of switching fire mode on some weapons.)

Also has anyone mentioned new vehicle types? (eg. human plane, alien fighter, human jeep, alien scout).

I've also updated my ideas list, yet again.

[p0lar_bear]

That's why I said about a new tool command to automaticly take a whole folder of images and set them up as an animated.bitmap for you.

The problem there is making all the source images in the first place. Why dump each frame of a video into an image to be compiled back into a pseudo-video, when you could just transcode the video to a different format and be done with it?